CM Paulius Juknis

Hello chess friends! I'm Paulius Juknis, a candidate master from Lithuania with over 2 decades of competitive chess experience and 5 years as a coach. My goal is simple: to help you consistently grow as a player and enjoy the improvement process.
If you’d like to work together, feel free to reach me via message or email paulius.juknis@gmail.com

I've been actively playing OTB and online chess for over 20 years.
I mainly participate in various blitz, rapid, classical OTB tournaments in my country, but 3-4 times per year go abroad to play in some strong classical tournaments.

One of my biggest achievements as a coach has been guiding a youngster over four years, helping him progress from a 1600 to a 2100 FIDE Elo rating. I’ve been coaching online for 3+ years, working with players of all ages and levels — from enthusiastic beginners to ambitious improvers.
As a seasoned tournament player, I share practical, experience-based insights — focusing on what truly works in real games.
In september 2025, I began teaching chess to children in schools and also started working with chessed.me online. Through these experiences, I have developed strong skills in working with kids and introducing chess to beginners.

You can also find me on chess.com www.chess.com/member/benkoni_KID

I have collected big amount of chess resources, books, courses over the years and can adapt my library to your playing strength, identify areas of improvement and work on them with you.
My main strength I believe is opening preparation, but with improvers I focus more on good foundations like tactics, calculation, basic endgame knowledge, strategy understanding according to students' level of course to be interesting and not too hard.

Every lesson is tailored to your needs, but usually includes:
1. Homework/game review — identifying strengths and areas for improvement
2. Focused theme (e.g., openings, tactical patterns, strategy, classical games, or endgame technique)
3. Interactive analysis of your games to apply learned concepts directly

So I use a mix of methods:
* Opening preparation suited to your level
* Tactical and mating pattern training
* Practical + theoretical endgame roadmap
* Strategic understanding of pawn structures, attack/defense, middlegame concepts
* Interactive master game analysis to sharpen calculation and decision-making
and more methods, which can be adapted based on your needs.